Friday, August 21, 2009

MamaKat's Writer's Workshop has prompted: "Hi, my name is ______ and I am a _______." ...so here I go.Please also go visit my friends over at DadBlogs this week for FatherHood Friday.Daddys are awesome. We help make Mommies. Most of the time.By the way, this post is dedicated to Holly. I had the revelation for this idea minutes after meeting her. Read into that what you will.

Hi. My name is Jay, and I am a Grossophobe.

I've never eaten a booger. This being my blog and not needing to impress to any great degree, I can tell the truth. I've never eaten a booger, but I saw friends do it when I was younger, and they didn't seem to think anything of it. When I saw a classmate in high school do it, however, I immediately knew there was something not quite right with the lad.

I had a recollection and a revelation recently, about Gross, and it's evolution.

When I was in college, home was a small town in Colorado for a number of years during the '80s. Money was tight, so activities consisted of a $5 pizza from Blackjack, trying to impress the freshmen at the local dorm, or...one last one...that I now shudder to recall.

It was called My Tubbery. A business. A small building filled with individual rooms that contained hot tubs to be rented. By the half hour. I can think of multiple dates, and girlfriends, that My Tubbery entertained. And I think back to those blissful, bubbling tubs, and my ignorance.

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. And I may again.

I'm sure the chlorine killed some of what we luxuriated in, but today I'm pretty sure I would have a problem partying in a used condom.

It's one of life's great ironies...by the time you realize how profoundly terrible something is, most times you've already done it, stepped in it, eaten it, or worse. I've spent a thousand nights in hotels, from the hi-falutin' to the hovel, and yet it took the majority of my life before Dateline thought to take me on a tour of one with a blacklight.

I'm considering boiling myself in acid.

Ignorance really is bliss, my friends, and a helluva lot more fun than the sanitizer-toting obsessive compulsive I see in the mirror today. Early adulthood taught the "5-second rule". Kids have an "infinite second" rule, which I continued in college. Today when I see my son eat something from the floor, knowing our beagle has been marching there minutes before on her poo-dipped paws, I have to resist the urge to take a wire brush to his tongue and make him gargle with Clorox.

Ultimately, though, the evolution itself is killing me much more than any airborne carcinogen. I miss that ignorance, and there is no going back. My destiny is to finish out my days in a level 5 biohazard unit having friends and family push my favorite soaps to me through the airlock.

I've evolved, you see. I grew up. And it sucks. Hard.

As I write this, I sit on a flight with my exponentially more hygienic wife winging our way to one of the dirtiest cities (figuratively and literally) in the US, Las Vegas. I note the airline blanket I thoughtlessly draped across my legs as I sat down. As soon as I did, my pretty wife kindly pointed out how disgusting I was. And I now wonder, despite the fact that the blanket is touching the skin of my legs, if I will have the courage to use two fingers to drop it to the floor.

Maybe I could use my elbows.

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Oh i know just what you mean. We were at ana musement park this summer and for the first time ever as i touched the railing while waiting iin line...i literally became ill thinking about what i was posibly touching. I immediately got out the sanitizer and did not touch another railing all day long! The older i get the more this bothers me...as a kid i could have cared less!

Yeah...I have second thoughts about the intelligence of hitch hiking with 2 friends in Ocean City, MD. Especially when we got picked up in a van by some hippies who gave us wine...btw, I was 14.. So proud....NOT

Thank you for nailing my front door shut on me Jay! I have a little mantra that I chant to my children (within reason). "God made dirt so dirt don't hurt. But remember, he taught people how to make soap too."

I just don't get grossed out that easily. Think about how little people knew about sanitation and the like for thousands of years, yet here we are, still thriving as a species. I mean, I don't go out of my way to touch nasty stuff, but I also don't worry too much about the germs around us. But, the Tubbery does sound disgusting. My moral and hygienic sensibilities are offended.

BLICK!!! Funny how when you are younger you don't think about that kind of thing. Now the idea of private hot tubs makes my skin crawl. I don't even want to know what happened with the black light.*shudders

we are toomuch alike...but not for the fact that i ate boogers. can i say that i still do once in awhile if there's nowhere to fling it. it's much better lying in my intestines that on the floor of my car. don't fucking tell anyone this

Back in college we used to go on spring break down on Cape Cod and cram as many people into one cheap hotel room as humanly possible. One year we got the cost down to $15/night/person and the place had a jacuzzi. We were stoked, and drinking. Thinking back on it, I may join you in that acid bath.

OH, you just brought back memories of Sycamore Springs, a hot tub wonderland on the side of a hill near San Luis Obispo where we used to go. We had a friend who worked there, so any tub that wasn't booked and paid for, we could use for free. It was at night and the tubs were in a wooded area, so we couldn't see well . . . i shudder to think what might have been in there. Truly the definition of gross.

BTW, a friend told me on Tuesday night that blankets were removed from planes because of swine flu fears. She didn't mention a particular airline. I thought it was all airlines. Perhaps not. Or perhaps your airline didn't get the memo.

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded.- Emerson